In some conventional communications between a client and a web service, each client request for a specific portion of data requires a separate, pre-defined function to be executed by the web service that receives the request. This need for many pre-defined functions on the server side requires a significant amount of coding, development and maintenance efforts. When initial development efforts on the server side do not anticipate all possible types of client data requests, additional development efforts are necessary to generate necessary functions. In other conventional client-web service communications, the server returns all data in response to a client request, regardless of what portion of data the client needs. This scheme places a burden on the client side to parse through the data to find the needed portion. Further, when the amount of data returned by the server is large, this scheme is hindered by slow transaction times. Thus, there exists a need to overcome at least one of the preceding deficiencies and limitations of the related art.